Sex Workers on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside Jori Dusome

1 Lost and Forgotten: Sex Workers on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Jori Dusome ABSTRACT: From 1978 to 2002, more than 60 women went missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an area that has often been described as “Canada’s poorest postal code”. For decades, families of the area’s missing women filed police reports and engaged with the media about their vanished loved ones, however little headway was made in the case until ten years later, when the Vancouver Sun began publishing a series of stories on the women that drew provincial and national attention. Motivated by citizen dissent and accusations of negligence, The Vancouver Police Department and the RCMP finally launched a joint task force, resulting in the arrest and conviction of Robert “Willie” Pickton, a pig farmer from Port Coquitlam, for the serial murders of street-involved women. The subsequent excavation of the Pickton property became the largest criminal investigation in Canadian history, spanning several years and costing tens of millions of dollars. However, the danger and violence that plagued women on the Downtown Eastside remained largely the same for many years after Pickton’s arrest. While media coverage narrated Pickton as a single deranged male, this narrative effectively eliminated the context of the broader social background that thrust these women into harm’s way. In this paper, I will discuss the racialization, spatialization, and class distinctions that heavily influence women's participation in the sex trade, as well the media narratives that enable an understanding of Pickton as a violent outlier. The research shows that despite these narratives, violence against marginalized women is a part of the normative social order, which is precisely what allows violent men to function without apprehension in these communities for so long. As you will read, violence against women cannot be described as simply the action of a few bad apples, but is instead a larger part of a “continuum of violence” enacted against already marginalized women. Keywords: MMIWG, Robert Pickton, sexual violence, street-level sex work From 1978 to 2002, more than 60 the Vancouver Sun began publishing a series women went missing from Vancouver’s of stories on the women that began to draw Downtown Eastside, an area that has often provincial and national attention to the issue. been described as “Canada’s poorest postal Motivated by citizen dissent and accusations code” (Hugill, 2010:11). For decades, families of negligence, The Vancouver Police of the area’s missing women filed police Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted reports and engaged with media about their Police launched a joint task force known as vanished loved ones, even establishing an Project Evenhanded (or the Missing Women annual commemorative march to raise Task Force) which eventually resulted in the awareness in 1991, known as the Valentine’s arrest and conviction of Robert “Willie” Day Walk to Remember (“Robert Pickton Pickton, a pig farmer from Port Coquitlam Case”, 2017). However, little headway was (“Robert Pickton Case”, 2017). Bones, DNA, made in the case until ten years later when and personal items belonging to at least 33 of Lost and Forgotten 2 the missing women were found on the Pickton air drug market, impossible to police property, and Pickton later made a jailhouse (Cameron, 2007; Culhane, 2003:594). While confession to an undercover cop of a further estimates as to the number of sex workers on 16 murders, bringing the total number of the Downtown Eastside are unreliable at best, victims to 49 (Burgmann, 2012). The it is estimated that their numbers also range in subsequent excavation of the Pickton property the thousands, with their drug addiction became the largest criminal investigation in regularly posited as an explanation for their Canadian history, spanning several years and cheap tricks (Hugill, 2014:137). This flood of costing tens of millions of dollars (Cameron, street-level sex-trade workers to the 2007; Culhane, 2003). Downtown Eastside was largely motivated by Yet the danger and violence that civilian movements in the late 80s and early plagued women on the Downtown Eastside 90s aimed at removing prostitution from remained largely the same for many years residential and suburban neighbourhoods, after Pickton’s arrest. Media coverage with residents protesting the “nuisance” that continually narrated Pickton and his attacks sex work was sure to bring to their under the frame of the “single deranged communities (Hugill, 2010; Lowman, 2000). male”, a psychopathic killer driven by mental As a result, instead of attempting to eliminate instability to cause death and destruction. prostitution, police chose to displace it to This, among other narratives, effectively more fitting locales that had already been eliminated the context of the broader social labeled as deviant. This, alongside changing background that thrust these women into laws and police crackdowns on indoor sex harm’s way. The news media leaned heavily work pushed more women onto the street than on poverty, homelessness, and addiction as ever before (Pitman, 2002:179). explanations for the women’s victimization Towards the end of the 20th century, rather than reactions to their marginalization. the Downtown Eastside spiral into economic In this paper, I will discuss the racialization, despair was well underway and was an issue spatialization, and class distinctions that which was only compounded by the heavily influence Downtown Eastside concentration of society’s most marginalized women’s participation in the sex trade, as well folks into one distinct geographical area. At the media narratives that enable an the time of the disappearances, the average understanding of the missing women as annual income on the Downtown Eastside was complicit in their victimization. just over $12,000, several points below the Known to locals as the “Low Track” national poverty line. The unemployment rate for its expansive market of inexpensive sexual in the area was nearly three times that of the services, the sex worker stroll in Downtown rest of the city (Cameron, 2007; Culhane, Vancouver is an area that has long been 2003:596). Thanks to cuts by the British sequestered, intended to act as a catch-all for Columbia government of nearly 30% to social the deviant ne’er-do-wells of the inner city, programs in the 1990s, welfare shelter providing both a location and an explanation stipends in Vancouver plummeted to just $325 for Vancouver’s undesirables (Greene, per month (Cameron, 2007; Hugill, 2010). 2001:1). Of the Downtown Eastside’s The booming real estate prices across the city approximately 16,000 residents, it is made most options for shelter unavailable, and estimated that roughly 5,000 of them are as a result SROs or single room occupancy addicts or active drug users, and the hotels, almost all of which were located on the intersection of Main and Hastings (or “Pain Downtown Eastside, became the only feasible and Wastings”) is often referred to as an open- option for the city’s poor, often charging INvoke Vol. 6 3 monthly rent at the exact value of a welfare their other Downtown Eastside cheque (Cameron, 2007). On top of this, only counterparts—some garnering less than 50% six beds were available for women in the local of the poverty line figure (Hugill, 2010:38). detox program, which was a mandatory first- The economic disarray provides little by way step before being referred to public healthcare of local employment, and welfare payments rehab programs (Cameron, 2007:XIII). Thus, cannot begin to cover exigent costs of daycare many were left poor, homeless, and addicted, and transportation that would be necessary to leaving them few other options than to stay on attend a “normal” job. Where men can turn to the Downtown Eastside and resort to illicit drug dealing and trafficking, women are more means of making money. likely to turn to sex work to subsidize what All of these factors, alongside an HIV little income they get (Culhane, 2003:601). epidemic that rocked the Downtown Eastside Further, those living in poverty are in 1997, served to pathologize the area as a significantly more likely to have their children site of sickness and contagion that became taken away, which creates the potential for a inherently interlinked with poverty. The deeply traumatic separation that could push establishment of this “collection zone” for women even farther into the arms of addiction deviants functioned to position the space as (Hugill, 2010:38). products of deviant people, instead of the Another critical factor in the people as products of the marginalized space. marginalization present here is the Indigeneity This encouraged the public to visualize the of many Downtown Eastside residents. It is Downtown Eastside’s citizens as culpable in estimated that anywhere from 50-80% of the their own “degeneracy and […] vile women who work the Low Track are criminality,” effectively placing blame on Indigenous, despite comprising only 2% of the society’s most vulnerable members for their population of Vancouver (Hugill, 2010:47; continued and cyclical abuse (Hugill, Razack, 2016:294). Many Indigenous women 2010:81). The distinction of a space for these flee their reserves or hometowns to urban people, a colloquial “sin city”, inclines us to centers like Vancouver to escape abuse and see them as othered from “ordinary” citizens domestic violence. Because of this, there are (Hugill, 2014:131; Gilchrist, 2010:375). A equal numbers of Indigenous men and women prime example of this can be seen in the in the community, despite the male population “Missing” posters disseminated by police, of the Downtown Eastside being three times which labeled the women exclusively as the female one in size (Hugill, 2010:51). citizens of the Downtown Eastside, not Violence is an unfortunately common reality Vancouver (Pitman, 2002:176).

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